Monday, April 15, 2013

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

I first saw the excellent (reel-to-reel) movie adaptation
in a high school film study class. I read the outstanding book in undergraduate
school, again in graduate school, and most recently. Though I have always wanted to
live life like Zorba, I knew it would be impossible “to obey the divine and
savage clamor within me.”

“The human
soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still
coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty…

“At times I
was seized with compassion. A Buddhist compassion, as cold as the conclusion of
a metaphysical syllogism. A compassion not only for men but for all life which
struggles, cries, weeps, hopes and does not perceive that everything is a
phantasmagoria of nothingness…

“Free yourself from one passion to be
dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery?
To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God...? ‘My son, I carry on as
if I should never die… And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute…’

“While experiencing happiness, we have
difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when happiness is past and we look
back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had
been…

“’Do you
dance?’ he asked me intensely. ‘Do you dance?’ ‘No.’ “No?’… He made a leap,
rushed out of the hut, cast off his shoes, his coat, his vest, rolled his
trousers up to his knees, and started dancing… He threw himself into the dance,
clapping his hands, leaping and pirouetting in the air, falling on to his
knees, leaping again with his legs tucked up—it was as if he were made of
rubber…

“The longer
I live, the more I rebel. I’m not going to give in; I want to conquer the
world!...

“How simple
and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched
little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to
feel that here and now is a simple, frugal heart… ‘Life is trouble,’ Zorba
continued. ‘Death, no. To live—do you know what that means?’…

“I went over
my whole life, which appeared vapid, incoherent and hesitating, dreamlike. I
contemplated it despairingly. Like a fleecy cloud attacked by the winds from
the heights, my life constantly changed shape…

“I
remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just
as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I
waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over
it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the
miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the
butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when
I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled. The wretched butterfly tried
with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help
it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the
unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too
late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its
time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my
hand…

“The human
element is brutish, uncouth, impure—it is composed of love, the flesh and a cry
of distress. Let it be sublimated into an abstract idea, and, in the crucible
of the spirit, by various processes of alchemy, let it be rarefied and
evaporate…

“I have
always been consumed with one desire: to touch and see as much as possible of
the earth and the sea before I die… Once more there sounded within me, together
with the crane’s cry, the terrible warning that there is only one life for all…
that there is no other, and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here.
In eternity no other chance will be given us. A mind hearing this pitiless
warning—a warning which, at the same time, is so compassionate—would decide to
conquer its weakness and meanness, its laziness and vain hopes and cling with
all its power to every second which flies away forever… I knew that eternity is
each minute that passes… ‘Woe to him who does not feel that this life and the
next are but one!’…

“God changes
his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all
his disguises. At one moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next your son
bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning
walk…

“What is
this world? I wondered. What is its aim and in what way can we help to attain
it during our ephemeral lives? The aim of man and matter is to create joy,
according to Zorba—others would say ‘to create spirit,’ but that comes to the
same thing on another plane…

“I stood up.
‘Come on, Zorba,’ I cried, ‘teach me to dance!’ Zorba leaped to his feet, his
face sparkling. ‘To dance, boss? To dance? Fine! Come on!’… We threw ourselves
into the dance. Zorba instructed me, corrected me gravely, patiently, and with
great gentleness. I grew bold and felt my heart on the wing of a bird…

“One night
on a snow-covered Macedonian mountain a terrible wind rose. It shook the little
hut where I had sheltered and tried to tip it over. But I had shored it up and
strengthened it. I was sitting alone by the fire, laughing and taunting the
wind. ‘You won’t get my little hut, brother! I shan’t open the door for you.
You won’t put my fire out; you won’t tip my hut over!’ In these few words of
Zorba’s I had understood how men should behave and what tone they should adopt
when addressing powerful but blind necessity…

Teacher/Poet/Musician

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Persona

A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).